Undoubtedly, some of the best short-films I’ve seen lately came from Richard Mosse. Born and grew up in Ireland he is now based in New York. Mosse studied at Yale, Goldsmiths and the London Consortium. He is driven by an ambivalence toward photography and a desire to revisit and even rewrite traumatic cultural histories.

Cast Lead

Shot in the ruins of Gaza and the West Bank, August 2009. Cast Lead, the IDF codename for the Gaza war of 2009, is a term derived from Haim Nachman Bialik’s Hannukah poem about a game played with a spinning dreidel made of lead.

Cinematography and Editing by Trevor Tweeten. Colorist and Post Production by Jerome Thelia.

Souffleur

In an article written several years ago, Robert Fisk referred to the wreck of a Nazi-allied Vichy French U-Boat which lies beneath the waves off the coast of Beirut. The submarine was called Le Souffleur, and was sunk in 1941 by British destroyers which had followed it up the coast from Palestine.

Souffleur was made in sixteen hours as part of the 98 weeks workshop, Beirut, September 2008.

Theatre of War

Shot in Saddam Hussein’s hilltop palace in the mountains overlooking the River Tigris, Theatre of War is a slow, virtually static video piece redolent of classical history painting. Audio was recorded at the official US military hand-over ceremony at the nearby city of Saniya. A mullah’s prayer for unity among Arabs is spoken, after which the pan-Arab national anthem, Mawtini (My Homeland) is played, emphasizing Arab national solidarity and a pan-Arab territory. Made in Iraq in March 2009.

Cinematography and Editing by Trevor Tweeten. Digital Color and Post Production by Jerome Thelia.

Sydney photographer and filmmaker Keith Loutit attracted an internet and media sensation, following the release of his ‘Bathtub’ series of short films that transformed both iconic and familiar Sydney scenes into miniature wonderlands. Known as the pioneer of the tilt-shift / time-lapse technique, Loutit was the first to recognize how time and focus combine to support the powerful illusion of miniaturization in film. In his scaled down and sped up realities, real world subjects become their miniature counterparts. Boats bob like toys in a bathtub, cars race like slot-cars, and crowds march as toy armies. Loutit’s aim is create a sense of wonder in our surroundings by “challenging people’s perceptions of scale, and helping the viewer to distance themselves from places they know well”.